Experts Agree Trump’s Ethics Plan Falls Short

Out of all the news from Wednesday -- Trump's comments on Russia, Rex Tillerson's confirmation hearing, the Senate taking its first major step to repeal Obamacare -- the biggest might have been ethics experts saying that President-elect Donald Trump's announced plan to separate himself from his business doesn't go far enough. And as a result, they say, Trump is potentially triggering a constitutional crisis. His plan includes handing over business operations to his sons and placing his assets in a trust, but not a blind one controlled by an independent actor. The problems with Trump's plan?

"Foreigners and others will continue to be able to ingratiate themselves by doing business with Trump organizations, which enriches Trump," Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University specializing in ethics, toldNBC's Benjy Sarlin. "It's really quite simple."

"Stepping back from running his business is meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective. The presidency is a full-time job and he would've had to step back anyway," said Walter Shaub, director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. "The idea of setting up a trust to hold his operating businesses adds nothing to the equation. This is not a blind trust -- it's not even close."

"He has all of the conflicts of interest that he had before," Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, told Forbes. "We don't know who his business partners are, we don't know who he owes."

"The president-elect's disregard for ethics and precedent and the Constitution in his press conference today is going to precipitate an ethics and a constitutional crisis from the day he's sworn in," Norm Eisen, who served as President Obama's ethics lawyer said on MSNBC.

"I don't think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president of the United States of America," says head of U.S. Office of Government Ethics

Eisen was referring to Trump violating the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which states that no person holding federal office can receive a fee or profit from a foreign government or entity (so foreign delegations staying at Trump hotels). Trump's lawyer said that, to avoid this, Trump's hotels would donate any profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury. But that practice wouldn't necessarily eliminate this concern. ("As soon as he receives the payment, he will have benefited, even if he later decides to give it away," Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law told the New York Times.) On "Today" this morning, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway defended the president-elect's ethics moves. "He has agreed to step away from everything associated with the Trump Organization," she said. "Why always the presumptive negativity when it comes to Mr. Trump?" But according to these ethics experts, the best -- if not only -- way for Trump to eliminate any conflicts of interest or potential violations of the Emoluments Clause is to sell off his business and put the proceeds in a blind trust. "I don't think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president of the United States of America," said Shaub, the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.